1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the process and device for producing animated cartoons which employ a screen and a projector type cathode ray tube that correspond to the light table in conventional devices so as to enable the reproduction of the live-action films and educational films and the tracing of the images on these films as well as the checking of the motion of the animated figures drawn by the animator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An animated cartoon is made up of a series of slightly variant drawings. In checking the motion of the figures of the drawings before finally filming them, it has been a conventional practice to hand-feed or turn the series of successive drawings rapidly. This method largely depends on the technique of an animator who mastered it over long years of practice, and cannot be regarded as an accurate checking method. Thus, the accurate check on the motion of the figures can only be done by actually projecting the completed animated cartoon after the drawings have been painted and filmed. Assuming the number of drawings required to be projected for each second is twelve drawings, an animated cartoon of 30-minute duration requires a little more than 20,000 drawings. Thus, when unnatural motions of figures or some faults are detected only at the stage of projecting the film, it would require a great deal of work to correct them.
In the conventional devices, the tracing of the live-action film and animated cartoon film is done by means of film projection. In other tracing method monitored images are used. But because of the parallax caused by the thickness of glass in front of the monitor, a satisfactory tracing cannot be performed. To make up for this drawback, another method has been developed in which the monitored image is projected through a lens onto the screen. This method also has a problem that the projected image on the screen is dark making the tracing extremely difficult.